In Shadow Cloaked
by rolleightdown
Summary: While Spartans may hold the key to humanity's survival, they are backed by the rest of the UNSC. This is the story of Bravo Company of the 139th ODST Battalion. Rated T to M for strong violence and moderate profanity.
1. Chapter 1

**UNSC Destroyer ****_In Shadow Cloaked  
_Orbiting FLEETCOM Base October  
Gladius System  
08:30 Hours Local  
December 28th, 2551 (Military Calendar) **

Corporal Patrick Murphy awoke to the sounds of several of his fellow Marines' bare feet slapping the floor as his cryo chamber's lid opened. He held his face in his hands as the sensation of someone repeatedly clamping a vise down on his head began to ease. PFC Chu bitched as his feet hit the plating, "God_damn_, this deck is _freezing_!"

Gunnery Sergeant Wilson's rough alto cracked across in derision, "So were you, five minutes ago. What, you thought joining the Corps would be easy?" She gave him her lopsided grin, the left corner tugged quite a bit tighter than the right from scar tissue, and continued, "Stick with me, kid. We're gonna see the galaxy..."

She let her voice trail off, but Chu knew his line, "...go to exotic places..."

Murphy continued, "...meet interesting natives..."

And the rest of the ODSTs joined in with the old, old conclusion, "...and kill them!"

The chorus brought a smile to Murphy's features. The damned squid-heads might be beating the UNSC, but you couldn't tell it by looking at Bravo of the One-Thirty-Ninth. They were rough, tough, and ready to rock, even just out of cryo. High-and-tights abounded, and not a single one of the troopers had any extra fat. They looked vaguely like a very motley version of a college track team, until you saw their eyes. Those eyes, despite the differences in the troopers' appearances--from Wilson's obsidian coloration and deeply scarred face, to PFC Chu's flat, asiatic features, to Murphy's pale, freckled visage--all held the flat promise of death to anyone in their way. They were tough, and they knew it. Knew it so deep that they didn't have to prove it to anyone.

The platoon filed out, joking and laughing with each other as they headed for the showers. The _In Shadow Hidden_ was one of the new _Dirk _class destroyers, the first UNSC ships with grav plating reverse-engineered from captured Covenant technology. That meant, amongst other things, that the jarheads and squids who manned her were actually allowed the luxury of showering without having to use a rebreather. The luxury was more than appreciated by the Marines; there is little that a jarhead enjoys more than a hot shower and clean clothes. Especially Helljumpers, since they spent so much time in the field.

After having spent several minutes under the hot spray (heat being one of the few things that is never in short supply aboard a deep space vessel) and getting dressed, Murphy made his way on down with the rest of Bravo to get some chow. They qued up and were served food by the petty officer in charge of the mess, before seating themselves at the long cafeteria tables. Coffee and reconstituted orange juice were the order of the day.

Lance Corporal Weinbender looked up from poking at his faux eggs, his vaguely Mediterranean features twisted in a mask of disapproval and bitched, "Man, this shit sucks. I've had better MREs. Y'remember that time we rotated through Australia? The little Chinese place down in Brisbane?"

Murphy's face split with a grin as he reminisced, "Yeah, with those dumplings. I've never had better. And the kung pow chicken, man...I miss that place. What was its name again? 'The Green somethingoranother', right?"

"'Green Dragon', I think. 'Course it might've been the 'Green Seas', too. I seem to remember something like that, somewhere," Chu added. "Besides, Weinbender, I think it's the eggs that're really off. If you don't eat those, you should be okay."

Weinbender frowned down at his plate, full of nothing but eggs and toast. He picked at it for a few more moments and then gave up, rising to shove the rest of his plate onto the return rack for the mess. He got another cup of OJ and sat back down next to his squad mates.

Murphy continued the conversation, "I dunno, though. I always did think the best place was that little bar in New Manila, over on Minister. That little place, the one that actually had authentic Black Bush, it served the best damned chimichangas that I've ever had. That, and the whiskey, well...if the Covenant glass that place, they're _really_ gonna piss me off."

The Marines got quiet, as they usually did when the subject of the Covenant came up. The rest of the meal passed in near-silence as each remembered fallen comrades and destroyed worlds. The UNSC may have been able to hold their own on the ground, but in space they were totally outclassed. And, as someone had once said quite aptly, "Whoever holds the orbitals, holds the planet."

Perhaps thirty minutes passed, and then the ODSTs were herded into the briefing room. They filed in, and the hatch closed. Wilson's rough voice sang out, "Officer on the _deck_!"

One hundred troopers shot to their feet, coming to near-perfect Attention. Captain Samuel A. Knott strode to the front of the room as he said, "At ease. Take your seats; this won't take long."

He stood behind the podium as a holotank brought up a schematic of the Gladius system. A few heartbeats passed while he examined the troops; Captain Knott was a medium-sized British man who appeared to have been wrought from wire. His salt-and-pepper hair gleamed under the harsh lighting while he considered the room. He began as the lights dimmed, "This briefing is covered under the JAG 4465/LHG code word security protocol. Any divulgance of information gathered from this briefing or subsequent events to non-code word-authorized personnel will be punished to the fullest extent of the UNSC UCMJ, up to and including the death penalty. Your code word clearance is 'Firehawk'.

"This is the Gladius system. FLEETCOM has decided that we, Bravo company of the 139th, are here to pick up the newest model of HEV for testing. The eggheads back at UNSCOTEC"--he pronounced it "un-scow-tek"--"have come up with a new wrinkle that they think will lower our casualty rate when we drop." He brought up a wireframe model of an HEV, highlighting the ablative plating that kept a trooper alive as he dropped from orbit. "The plating and cooling systems on the new HEV have been thoroughly tested, but UNSCOTEC want a combat demonstration. It just happens that the ONI boys have found us a new colony right at the edge of UNSC space. Ninety-six hours from now, we ship out."

At that, there was a collective murmur. Four days just wasn't enough time for the Helljumpers to truly familiarize themselves with the new equipment, and that meant they were going to take unnecessary casualties.

Knott let it pass and then continued, "We are going to train and rehearse the drop backwards and forwards for the next four days. Platoon leaders, you've got a schedule downloaded into your mailboxes. Please look it over before implementing it; it has a few things that are nonstandard." He paused for a moment, obviously considering whether he should get into more detail, then finished, "Questions?"

Silence ruled the compartment. He smiled a hard, dark smile, and said, "Then let's get to it. We've got too much to do and too little time to do it in. That's why they asked for Bravo. Dis_missed_!"

A general, "_HOOWAH_!" answered, and the troops began to file out to their individual berths...


	2. Chapter 2

**UNSC Destroyer ****_In Shadow Cloaked  
_Near FLEETCOM Base October  
Gladius System  
18:45 Hours Local (12:45 Hours Zulu)  
January 2nd, 2542 (Military Calendar)**

Cpl. Murphy mulled over the training and simulations that the company had gone through over the past four days as he stripped and cleaned his BR55 rifle. He liked the new rifle; its large 9.5x40mm cartridge had sufficient penetration to go through Grunt armor with ease. Against the damned Elites and Jackals, it had a little more trouble; but that was what you got when you went up against critters with energy shielding. It sure as hell beat the old 7.62x51mm UNSC cartridge that the MA5 series of rifles fired; while sufficiently powerful to punch through Grunt armor and even the standard M52B UNSC personal armor system, it didn't have sufficient kinetic energy to drain an Elite's shield quickly enough to make a difference at close range.

Murphy finished cleaning the bolt assembly and snapped it back into place, safetied the rifle, and racked it. He then grabbed his personal "sidearm", a cut-down M90 shotgun. He'd spent quite a bit of his time with Gunny Wilson, who ran Bravo's armory, making sure that "Tessie" was modified to his specifications. While the huge eight gauge magnum shells gave off enough kick to nearly tear the sawed-off shotgun out of his hands, he'd been more than thankful for having it on several occasions. There was that time on Icarus III with the near-bear: the six hundred kilo predator had been too close for his MA5B to be effective, but a slug from "Tessie" through the eye had been enough to put the critter down. "Tessie's" barrel had been shortened to twelve inches and the stock had been removed. Murphy had replaced the pistol grip with a better-balanced one to offset the recoil as much as he could, and the magazine had been altered to reflect the difference in size. "Tessie" only carried four slugs, but she could throw 'em out just as fast as Murphy could pump and pull the trigger.

He stripped the barrel and went over it with one of the new cleaning cloths that were permeated with self-renewing cleanser, while he let his thoughts wander back over the past few days. It seemed that whichever world they were to drop on was going to be cold, really cold. Arctic, even. The new drop pods were a pain, too; they had too many bells and whistles for a dumb grunt (not that anyone who got into Bravo of the 139th was _dumb_, honestly) to grasp reflexively under combat conditions. The REMFs that designed the damned things always thought that more options were better. That might be so for, say, a civvie ground vehicle; but you sure as hellfire didn't want to be trying to figure out which button to push when you were in a hot zone. That sort of shit got soldiers killed.

So, it was with these black musings running through his head that he found himself in conversation with Gunny Wilson. She strode into the berthing compartment to see Murphy sitting at the small table bolted to the decksole with "Tessie" spread out before him in pieces. She shook her head and gave him one of her lopsided grins as she greeted him with her usual rough humor, "That fucking thing is going to get you killed one of these days, Corp. You're gonna joggle the safety and blow a hole right through your foot sometime. I guaran-damn-tee it."

"Well, just so long as it blows a hole through some of the damned squidheads first, I don't really care, Gunny. That's kinda the whole reason for keeping Tessie around," Murphy replied, in a much colder tone than he'd meant to.

Fortunately, Wilson decided to let it pass; she knew he was under quite a bit of strain. Since Murphy's sergeant had bought it three weeks ago, subjective time, he'd tried to stand up and take charge for his squad. This was to be his first combat drop as a squad leader, which is quite a bit more than most Corporals--particularly ones who'd only had their second stripe for less than six months of waketime--had to take on. Fortunately, he'd been a fireteam leader before Sergeant Paolo had bought it. That sort of leadership experience translates well.

Thus, instead of biting Murphy's head off, she simply said, "Just keep your powder dry, okay Murphy? We'll get through this drop just fine."

It was a lie, and they both knew it...


	3. Chapter 3

**UNSC Destroyer **_**In Shadow Cloaked  
**_**Slipspace, Near System Delta 132  
04:30 Hours Local (08:30 Hours Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar) **

The company had been out of cryo for nearly twenty-four hours at the time that the _In Shadow Cloaked_ made the transition from Slipspace to N-space. Tearing a hole through reality, the powerful destroyer shifted back into being as its crew brought up the sensor systems to full alert. Their task was simple: deploy Bravo to the planet's surface in order to capture or destroy the Covenant research facility hidden there. While Bravo was doing that, the destroyer was to engage and run from any Covenant vessels present in-system.

It turned out that ONI had actually gotten something right for a change; there were no Covenant starships in Delta 132. As the _In Shadow Cloaked_ burned for Delta 132 IVa, a moon in orbit around the massive gas giant in the fourth position of the system, Bravo of the 139th mounted up in their HEVs. The matte-black drop pods felt like coffins inside; every trooper assigned to be an ODST was thoroughly screened for any claustrophobia before even entering the training program. Cpl. Murphy looked over his squad, ensuring that their gear was correctly stowed and that they were ready to rock as soon as their boots touched dirt--or snow, in this case.

Once he'd assured himself that "his" troopers were ready, he double-checked his own weaponry: his BR55, "Tessie", an M6C handgun, two M9 HE-DP frags, a canister of C7 foaming explosive, and two flash-bang grenades. Aware that even with all of the extra ammunition and munitions--nearly thirty pounds worth of ammo alone--he'd be out of _something_ by the end of the day, he ensured that his KA-BAR fighting knife was in its sheath as well.

He sealed the helmet to his standard M52E ODST pressurized armor. As he did so, he ran through the COM system diagnostics and double-checked that the advanced ballistic gel underlayer was operating properly. Once he was in the field, there would be little time to worry about a loose fastener or the like; and there is little that makes a soldier dead faster than missing an important item.

Finally, he came to the conclusion that he was as ready as he was going to be. Thirty seconds later, as he was triple-checking his stuff in the privacy of his HEV, he realized that he was just trying to distract himself. So, he kicked on his music in the pod. Strictly nonregulation, Murphy had wired in his music player into the pod's COM system so that it would play over the speakers in the HEV. ODSTs were allowed considerable freedom in their day-to-day lives, so long as it did not interfere with the mission. So, Murphy waited in the dark, close confines of what could easily become his coffin while listening to a long-dead singer whine about how he never would figure out why he was such a rat bastard.

A half hour passed as the _In Shadow Cloaked_ burned towards orbit and made sensor sweeps of the star system. Then, Captain Knott's voice came over the COM, stating, "Ten seconds to drop. I'll see you on the ground, boys and girls. Remember, _feet first into Hell_!"

A gathered, "_HOOWAH_!" came over the COM in response.

Then, the destroyer began to "fire" her drop pods at the small moon far below. She'd reached low orbit, just skimming the outermost envelope of atmosphere. The pods were "fired" from a specialized launcher that calculated the local gravity well, the destroyer's current motion, and the atmospheric conditions below; from that result, the launcher fired the pods at a specific velocity and angle that would allow their internal systems to be able to correct for any atmospheric disruption on the way down--that was the theory, at least.

First out the tube was the CO, Captain Knott, as was the tradition amongst drop troopers--going all the way back to the early twentieth century. Then the platoon leaders were fired out. Then the platoon sergeants. Then the squad leaders. So, it was Murphy's lot to listen to ten different _clack-WHAM!_s before his own pod shifted into position, and he was slammed back into his acceleration couch by the firing of his pod out the tube.

Then, he was in free-fall for nearly five minutes. His pod, now on internal guidance, began to drift towards the DZ far below. The first few bits of turbulence began to shake the pod as its ablative covering heated from atmospheric friction. The temperature rose in the pod, higher and higher, as it swayed from side-to-side and dropped unexpectedly quickly from a low-pressure zone. Soon, it was over fifty degrees Centigrade inside the pod, and the only thing keeping Murphy alive was the internal temperature regulator on his M52E armor. His HEV rattled so badly that he thought his teeth were going to come out of his head, and that was when he realized that he'd forgotten his mouthguard. Well, he'd just have to hope that he came through this without losing his tongue or incisors.

His holographic HUD showed the dispersal pattern of the pods, and the anti-aerospace fire that was coming from below in multicolored glory. Apparently, the Covenant were more on the ball than the lack of in-system starship support suggested. Here and there, a pod winked out--either from being struck by plasma fire or from atmospheric friction simply heating the transponder until it cooked itself into a puddle of plasticized metals.

His stabilization chute deployed with a sharp _WHANG_!, clacking his teeth together again. Then his retros fired, pushing him down into his acceleration couch at nearly eight gravities' acceleration. It held him there for nearly a minute. His suit automatically increased pressure on his limbs to avoid a blackout, and he crunched to help it along. Then, suddenly, there was one more solid _WHUMP_!, and he was down.

Murphy reached automatically for the emergency-release handle, and only then realized that the damned idiots who'd designed the "new and improved" version of the pod had moved it. He kicked it with his right foot, grabbing his BR55 from the quick-release rack and slinging his pack over his shoulder even as the explosive bolts ejected the front half of his pod out of the way and Siberia came howling in. Ahead, he could pick out muzzle flashes and the occasional plasma bolt, but it was nighttime and a howling blizzard was battering the area. So, as his HUD updated itself, he commanded it to show him the positions of his friendlies. Third squad of first platoon--"his" men--were spread all over Hell and gone. Which was to be expected with a drop: despite the best guidance software yet designed by man, _some_ scatter is bound to happen when a unit drops from the next best thing to outer-fucking-space. Wind shear, meteorological systems, odd pressure effects, and all the other little minions of the gods of physics have their way with the soldiers on the ride down.

It looked like none of the troopers in Third of First had been hit yet, though. Which was more than could be said for most of the squads of Bravo company...


	4. Chapter 4

**300m From Objective Alpha  
D****elta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
****04:41 Local Time (08:41 Zulu)  
****January 10****th****, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Murphy hit the small snowbank in front of him with a _whuff _of air punched from his lungs. The gravity was slightly lower on the moon than Terra-standard; even so, his pack was nearly fifty pounds, all told. Add in his weaponry, and it came to something just short of eighty pounds.

He studied the IFF position display in his HUD as the cold worked its way through his climate-controlled armor. Nearly ten percent of Bravo had already been wiped out; the drop itself had taken seven troopers, either through heatshield failure or Covvie AA fire. Two more had their retros fail; they resembled something unpleasantly similar to chunky salsa. But that left ninety-four effectives, almost half the normal TOE for an ODST platoon. As they had started at nearly half strength, that wasn't so bad.

Cpl. Murphy noted the positions of those troopers close enough to form a fireteam; most of the rest of the company was spread out all over Hell and gone. ODSTs, like their Airborne ancestors, relied on what had once been called LGSs–Little Groups of Soldiers–to get the job done. With their superior training, element of surprise, and the general chaos caused by such an unorthodox insertion method, the ODSTs usually held the initiative for the first few minutes of a drop. Under those conditions, the soldiers simply _fought_, as well as they could, being lead by whomever was nearby. Unit cohesion was for after they'd secured the immediate area and had time to breathe.

So, it was due to Murphy noticing that none of the four troopers within a hundred and fifty meters outranked him that he designated the five of them "Fireteam Lima"–that designation not already having been taken according to the COMnet. He automatically assigned himself as Lima One, Lance Corporal Higgins as Lima Two, and so on. He sent a ping to each of them; their HUDs displayed the information that they were now under his command. The whole process took maybe ten seconds.

He ordered, "Lima, advance by alternating numbers. Evens, _ADVANCE_!" Just like he'd done a thousand times in training drops.

The quintet moved forward through the swirling snow like ghostly Sherpas, laboring under their packs. On the fourth leapfrog, an armor-clad, eight-foot silhouette loomed out of the lashing darkness. Sun-bright plasma bolts leapt from its rifle, impacting PFC Irdis's torso. Her armor gave way under the ravening rounds' force, vaporizing in an instant. Her chest followed a moment later, appearing as if someone had taken a huge ice cream scoop to her flesh. She keeled over, instantly dead.

The rest of Lima dropped to the ground and returned fire, tracers lashing out like the vanguard of a swarm of lethal hornets. The squidhead's return fire was less than accurate at first, its attention grabbed by the flashing impacts on its shield–bright yellow-green in the light amplification mode of the ODSTs' HUDs. It began to track back along the tracers' paths, though; and it walked its fire right across the legs of PFC Miklos's legs. He howled with pain, his indicator immediately going from the combat-effective jade to a steady amber that indicated a disabling injury.

Corporal Murphy was swept up in the adrenalin rush of combat, his thoughts moving at a million klicks a second. The thought flashed through his head, _If it's dead, it can't hurt us anymore._ Without realizing it, he was suddenly on his feet and sprinting towards the hulking form of the Elite.

The squidhead didn't even notice the puny figure advancing on it at flank speed until Murphy suddenly materialized out of the swirling ice, right in front of it. It hesitated for less than a heartbeat, taken aback by the sudden appearance of its enemy. Only for a moment, though; its arms began the motion that would bring its plasma rifle to bear on the impudent monkey that thought to challenge it. That hesitation, though, cost it its life.

Murphy's finger tightened on "Tessie's" trigger, firing the ancient design. The massive load of double-ought penetrated the weakened shield and continued on to blow a hole the size of a softball right through the torso of the creature. Purple blood sprayed out, freezing as it touched the snow; and the Elite stood there for a moment, dumbfounded by the unexpected heaviness of its plasma rifle and the freezing cold it felt all of a sudden. Then, it collapsed; the massive form crumpled to the icy ground like a marionette with its strings cut.

Murphy came back to himself and realized that he was standing over a dead squidhead with "Tessie" cradled in his hands, her barrel smoking. He loaded another shell automatically and then realized that he had a trooper down. He rushed towards Miklos's indicator, ripping out a canister of biofoam as he went. He knelt down by the trooper, calling for a medic on the COM as he marked the man's position.

Exploring the wound, he realized that it stopped just short of the PFC's femoral artery. He sprayed biofoam into the crater and bandaged it with a self-adhesive, self-sterilizing compress. Knowing that the man would not be able to walk, Murphy detailed Lance Corporal Higgins to stay with him until a medic arrived; while PFC Briggs was not a small woman, Miklos was a rather large man. As Lance Cpl. Higgins was built along the lines of Olympus Mons, he'd be able to carry the man out if it came to that.

He shifted the two troopers' designations to Lima Beta One and Lima Beta Two. His stayed the same, and PFC Briggs became Lima Two. The two of them trudged off through the howling storm, leaving the wounded trooper and his mate there on the cold, hard ground. If Bravo didn't complete its mission, _nobody_ would be going home...


	5. Chapter 5

**150m From Objective Alpha  
****Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
****04:37 Local Time (08:37 Zulu)  
****January 10****th****, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Corporal Murphy went to ground with his teammate, as the massive doors came into view through his BR55's scope. His COM crackled with Captain Knott's British accent, "Lima Alpha One, Bravo Actual. Is that you, Murphy? Over."

Murphy started in surprise. He hadn't known that the Captain had known his name. "Yes, Sir. I'm approximately five-zero meters from the southern secondary entrance. It looks like there is a short squad of squidheads with a whole shi–sorry, Sir,–a whole flock of squeakies backing them up, maybe a little more than platoon-strength," he responded. "There are about two squads of vultures, as well. I see a Shade, and I also see at least three crew-served repeating plasma cannons. An emplaced energy shield blocks the entrance, too. Murphy, over."

"Damn. Wait one," came back Knott's calm, unhurried voice. A few heartbeats passed, while Murphy changed his half-full mag out for a fresh one. As he was pulling the charging handle, Knott came back over the COM, "I don't have much to send; about two-thirds of us are pinned down by a squad of Ghosts and a Wraith. We'll be able to put them down, but it's going to take time and men. I'm detailing Fireteam Golf to you. You should know a couple of them. Take that entrance, son, and hold like you mean it. We're counting on you. Bravo Actual out."

As Murphy pulled in a deep breath and let it out, six hunched forms materialized out of the swirling darkness. His HUD tagged them as Fireteam Golf for just a moment, then switched their designation to Fireteam Lima. Two of them were familiar: Lance Corporal Weinbender's and PFC Chu's names hung in jade glory over their ghostly images in the HUD.

Murphy spent just a moment looking his new detail over before designating them by number. "Okay, people. We've got a whole lot of hurt up in front of us, and we've got to take it out. Two and Four, you take left flank. Make sure that you get that damned Shade with a SPNKr"–he pronounced it "spanker"–"and keep your heads down. We'll need you for fire support if, when, it drops in the pot.

"Five and Seven, you take right flank. Your primary target is the generator for that stationary shield. Wait until we have everyone engaged to move. Four or five M9s ought to do it; if you can get close enough, use this instead," he continued, tossing over his canister of C7.

"Everybody else, you're with me. We're going to head up the middle and make as much ruckus as possible once the Shade is taken out. Any questions?" he finished.

Nobody said anything, and everyone's status lights burned a clean emerald tone. Murphy shook his head wryly, "You're all crazy. But it's been good serving with you. Let's go."

A quiet, "Hoowah," came back over the COM, and four of the eight troopers blended silently into the swirling night.

Perhaps sixty seconds passed before the first 102mm rocket streaked from its launcher and impacted the stationary Shade plasma gun, destroying it utterly. Four assault rifles opened up as one, three of them concentrating on the Elites–"squidheads" in the troopers' parlance. The theory was, if you took out the commanders, the troops wouldn't know what to do. It usually worked with the Covenant.

Tracers slashed through the swirling snow, impacting in blue coronas as the Elites' shielding protected them from the rounds' kinetic energy. Bolts of superheated plasma and guided crystal needles flailed out into the darkness, missing their targets for the first few seconds of the unexpected engagement. Another high-explosive SPNKr rocket came streaking out of the dark storm, pulping four or five Grunts–"squeakies" to the Marines–and knocking two Elites from their feet, shielding or not.

Murphy was firing in three-round burst mode, for control. He walked his bursts over to the first plasma cannon, hoping for a lucky shot that could destabilize the power cell and send the whole thing up like a satchel charge. No such luck, though; he hit the Grunt manning the cannon instead, throwing the ursine form back in a spray of blue blood and a small jet of flame as its methane rebreather ignited. His rifle bucked against his shoulder, bruising the soft tissues even through his armor's pauldron. That was the bitch of using a BR55; the recoil was something fierce.

Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Murphy shifted his aim and hit the second repeating plasma cannon. This one was right through the x-ring, though; the superdense power cell ruptured, bleeding over into the breech/barrel area and causing the deuterium pellet in the firing chamber to detonate sympathetically. This chain-reacted down through the deuterium storage magazine. The result was remarkably similar to when a crate of plasma grenades went up all at once.

A four-meter radius around the weapon was just wiped clean, vaporized by the fury of a star. Two meters beyond that, a single squidhead lay on the ground, stunned and with its shield down. As Murphy's HUD adjusted to the sudden flare-out and reset itself, he was just able to make out the eight-foot form. His rifle tracked automatically, and he squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened; his rifle's bolt was locked back and his ammo counter read "0".

Fumbling back for another mag of APHEX rounds, Murphy heard the anticlimactic "_WHUMP!_" that signaled the end of the energy shield. The energy field flickered and died, leaving the entrance wide open. He slapped the magazine home and yanked on the charging handle as he snapped into the COM, "Odd numbers, _ADVANCE_!"

Four of the eight rifles speaking suddenly silenced, and the Covenant fire redoubled as Grunts that had been hiding behind what cover they could find stuck their heads out. Ten meters later, the ODSTs grounded, going flat and returning fire. Murphy waited a beat, until the return fire had slackened, and ordered, "Even numbers, _ADVANCE_!"

Troopers sprinted forward, taking fire; two of them fell within eight strides, neither KIA according to Murphy's HUD. The rest of the evens dropped flat, less than thirty meters from the entrance.

Murphy came back over the COM and ordered, "Evens, grenades on three. Odds, cover–full auto. Ready, one, two, _THREE_!" The two soldiers that had just dropped flat sprung up and tossed grenades towards the packed Covenant, just as the aliens had been shifting their fire to cover the pattern that had emerged by each team moving in sequence.

The grenades tore through what was left of the Covenant forces. A few squeakies remained, but all of the Jackals and Elites had been eliminated by the dual clouds of lethal shrapnel. Aimed shots took care of the rest, and Fireteam Lima was in sole possession of the entrance.

Murphy let Lance Cpl. Weinbender take over the distribution of the troopers into defensive positions while he attempted to raise Captain Knott, "Bravo Actual, this is Lima One, over."

"Lima One, this is Bravo Six-One. The Captain's been hit. Wait one," came back the southern-accented voice of Gunny Wilson.

Murphy's only thought was, _Shit_, while he waited for Wilson to come back on the COM.

"We've got a bit of a shitstorm over here, Murphy, so make it short," she came back. The rattling _crack-crack-crack_ of assault rifles on full-auto was dimly audible in the background, along with the basso _hiss-WHUMP!_ of a Wraith's plasma mortar impacting near the mic.

"Gunny, we've taken the side entrance on the south wall. I'm designating it Nav Point Juliet on your HUD. No hostile response as of yet, but if you want my opinion, you might want to get over here, like, pronto," he replied.

"Got it. See you in five mikes. Hold like you gotta pair, eh Murphy?" Her amusement was audible even over the sharp reports, static, and explosions in the background.

"Aye, aye, Gunny!" Murphy responded.


	6. Chapter 6

**100m From Objective Alpha  
Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
04:39 Local Time (08:39 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar) **

Cpl. Murphy leaned back in his hastily-erected fighting position and sighed. It had been a frantic two minutes, what with the threat of a Covenant counterattack looming larger with every passing second. Only a thin alloy barricade, ripped from the corridor wall and propped into position, shielded him from fire at the L-junction that was the terminus of the entranceway to the base. The weapons-fire, rapid commands, and chopped-off screams of the wounded and dying that were filtering over the COM were not exactly calculated to ensure his peace of mind, either. 

So, it was as his adrenalin high began to wind down and he began to relax that, naturally, the Covenant hit his position. His name _was_ Murphy, after all.

Plasma bolts streaked down the three-meter-wide corridor, vaporizing the little snow that the storm had whipped into the base after the energy shield went down. They impacted with loud _hiss-SPRANG_!s on the thin metal sheets. Fireteam Lima sprung up, putting their "special actions" munitions to good use. The BR55 usually fired a 9.5x40mm APHEX round; it consisted of a hardened, superdense tungsten penetrator core tipped with an incendiary fuse and backed with a small block of C8 explosive. The whole thing was wrapped in a thin steel skin; when it impacted something hard (such as Grunt armor or an Elite's shield), the incendiaries ignited and set off the C8, sending the core--wreathed in steel shrapnel from the casing--tumbling uncontrollably through whatever it hit.

This had several advantages, not the least of which was that it penetrated pretty much any man- (or alien-) portable armor. Energy shielding had a tendency to ignore a few of these rounds, but enough would penetrate even that. However, it really _was_ a little overkill for the Grunts; their armor was pretty much paper-thin. So, instead of handing Bravo just the one type of ammo, Gunny Wilson had broken out some of the new experimental M242F flechette rounds.

The flechette rounds consisted of a high-impact molded resin "bullet", into which eight 1mm cupronickel darts had been embedded. When the round was fired, the thermal energy from the nitrocellulose necessary to propel it began to break down the resin. Within about a foot from the end of the barrel, the resin completely deteriorated, leaving an expanding cone of metal darts flying downfield. It had its problems: the resin had a tendency to coat the barrel after little more than a hundred shots, making it useless until it had been thoroughly cleaned; and the darts had some overpenetration issues. However, what the round did, was to essentially turn the BR55 into a seven-hundred-round-a-minute shotgun. Aiming becomes a luxury at that point.

Each trooper had been issued two mags of the M242F rounds; there were six unwounded soldiers in Lima. The corridor was filled with whistling copper darts for about five heartbeats, and then there were no more Covenant. The twelve shredded bodies of a squeaky response team were lying there quietly, in an expanding pool of stinking blue blood.

Murphy came over the COM, ordering, "Evens, switch back to standard mags; they'll probably throw vultures or squidheads at us next. I want to be ready for either. Make sure you have at least one M9 at hand, though."

He was wrong, though, as soldiers often are in the lethal calculus of war. Two hulking silhouettes came lumbering around the corner, each firing a searingly bright green-white bolt from its arm-mounted fuel rod cannon. The rounds went wide, but their thermal blooms were enough to convince the soldiers of Lima that the Hunters meant business.

Murphy's mind just started spouting a single curse under his frantically-racing thoughts, _Shit. Shit, shit shit shit shitshitshitshit..._

He was able to think over it, though, and he realized that there was only one answer, "Four, SPNKr, _NOW_!"

Fortunately for him, PFC Dodge had already beat him to the obvious conclusion. She was raising her 102mm rocket launcher, having taken less than a second to check her backblast area. She let loose just as the Hunters' cannons were glowing green with pre-fire energy. The surface-to-surface rocket impacted squarely on one of the creatures' "shoulder"s, its high-explosive anti-tank warhead disrupting the creature's cohesion and collapsing it to the deck in a pile of wriggling orange worms and cluttered blue armor.

She was fast enough to kill, but too slow to live. Her launcher cycled through its reloading mode; however her eyes widened inside her opaque helmet and she began to dive aside as the Hunter's bond-brother roared its rage and brought its weapon to bear. The green bolt streaked for her like the arrow of an angry god, taking her in the center of mass. Murphy had been looking at her when this happened, and it appeared to him as if there was a bright green-white flash. When it faded enough for his HUD to compensate again, all there was left of Dodge was half of a boot, smoldering from the thermal bloom, and the SPNKr launcher.

Murphy dove across the corridor, abandoning the slight amount of cover that his fighting position gave him. His right arm reached for the abandoned launcher as he flew. He _knew_, in his heart, that there was no way he'd ever be able to get to the launcher in time to save Lima. His heart sank, knowing that he'd failed Fireteam Lima, that they'd all be killed by the massive alien at the far end of the corridor. That paled, however, before the knowledge that the _rest_ of Bravo would be killed, having no place to go once the entrance was taken again by the Covvies. So, it was with black despair in his soul that he leapt for the rocket launcher.

Moments seemed to stream past so slowly during that flight; he could hear, clearly, the sound of the creature's weapon charging again, the sound of his mates' automatic rifle fire, and the sound of his heartbeat. It was as if through molasses that his fingers grasped the launcher and he altered his trajectory to land on his shoulder, ready to roll over and bring the launcher to bear as quickly as possible.

He was three-quarters of the way through the movement, the Hunter's fuel rod gun was glowing the bright green apex that it came to just before discharge, and his internal calculations had come to the absolute conviction that he'd never roll over fast enough--let alone aim--before the creature got him, when _another_ SPNKr fired down the corridor, taking the massive creature full in its chest. The creature crumpled, its worm-like colony organism sprayed out over the walls and ceiling in orange gore.

Murphy rolled over, stunned by the turn of events, to see Gunny Wilson kneeling at the corner of the junction, a smoking rocket launcher held loosely over one shoulder. He saw her helmet turn towards him and heard the smile in her grating voice, "What, you missed me?"


	7. Chapter 7

**100m From Objective Alpha  
Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
04:40 Local Time (08:40 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Murphy wasted only a moment goggling at the smoke-wreathed form of the Gunny before responding, "God_damn_ am I glad to see you! What took you so long?"

Wilson grinned behind her helmet and she said, "Well, the Covvies were none too happy about us leaving the party early. I had to leave 'em a present." Just then, a muffled _whump_! was felt through the corridor floor. "Used up most of our C9 for an FE tank mine. I brought some friends along, though..."

She gestured behind her with a languid, gauntleted hand. It was at this moment that Cpl. Murphy noticed the gaggle of troopers entering the base through the abbatoir that was once the side entrance. It looked to be about seventy soldiers, all told; Murphy's HUD told him that the highest-ranking one still alive was his good ole' Gunny Wilson.

He asked, "The Old Man?"

"Gone. He took a plasma mortar trying to coordinate the charge against that Wraith that had us pinned down. Most of the platoon leaders caught it in the first five minutes or so, and you know Top bought it last drop, so..." She let her voice trail off in sadness as she shook her head.

"Well, Gunny, let's get to it," he said in a much grimmer voice after a pause, bringing up the little Intelligence that ONI had been able to provide them on the structure of the base. He highlighted the corridor that they were in, noting that on the orignal Intel briefing's map, it had a T-junction where there was an L-junction now. He frowned, saying, "Gunny, I think these maps are full of shit. We're going to need scouts, unless I miss my guess."

"Thank you for volunteering, Corp!" was her artificially cheerful rejoinder. More seriously, she continued, "Take Lima, what's left of it, Hugo, Richards, and...mmm...Groening, and go scout ahead. Make sure you top up on ammo before moving out, though; I don't want you kids running into anything you can't handle. We'll be following in fifteen mikes; I've got to get a medevac station and resupply DZ set up in the meantime. Keep in radio contact, updates every ten mikes."

"Gotcha, Gunny," he replied. He brought up his IFF menu in the HUD and highlighted the three extra troopers, adding them to Lima's roster. "Groening, Hugo, Richards, front and center," he ordered.

The three troopers materialized out of the crowd, hunkering down at the end of the corridor. Murphy detailed the situation, applying callsigns to each before speaking to the fireteam in general. "Make sure that your ammo is topped up, and grab a couple of SPNKr launchers. We might need 'em, if more of them damned walking tanks come down on us. Anybody got any fucking idea what those were, by the way?"

A ringing silence answered him, with a couple of "nope"s, "negative"s, and "naw"s mixed in. He shrugged, continuing after a moment, "Well, if anyone sees one, sing out. We sure as Hell don't need to find out that they're 'round the corner by running right up on 'em. While you're taking on ammo, take a drink, too. I know it's cold out, but you're probably sweating anyway. You won't realize you're dehydrated until you collapse. You've got two minutes, people; make 'em count. Anybody gives you shit about grabbing the heavies, you tell 'em to talk to the Gunny. Questions?"

"No, Corporal," was the general answer.

"Alright. Let's move like we got us a purpose, then."

Two minutes later on the dot, the nine troopers headed out down the corridor. The lighting was an eerie bluish-purple; the ONI boys thought that the Covvies might see in slightly higher frequencies than most humans. That would explain the odd illumination, but it was still jarring to the ODSTs assigned to pathfind for Bravo. They moved in a loose formation, each pair of troopers covering each other. Murphy was third back from the pointman, Groening.

So, he had a good view when Groening came up stealthily on the fourth door, about seventy-five meters of twisting corridor down, and triggered the opening mechanism. Swarms of crystalline needles came flying out of the opened entryway, embedding themselves into his torso before exploding. Bits and pieces of Groening's corpse rained down on the drop troopers, stunning them momentarily with shock. They were well-trained, however; the soldiers only hesitated for a moment before Hugo and Murphy moved forward to the door, unlimbered M9s, and tossed them sidearmed into the darkened interior of the room. Roaring could be heard, followed by a pair of loud, near-simultaneous _CRACK_!s that marked the frag grenades' detonations.

Murphy dove across the entryway, firing "Tessie" as he went. The double-ought filled the entrance, and it turned out that his instincts were correct. A yellow-armored squidhead was less than a meter from the arch, its energy sword held high and ready for a strike. The buckshot blew it back in a welter of purple gore, tossing its lifeless body to the floor of the high-ceilinged room. Hugo entered first, glancing left and right before covering straight forward in his assigned sector. Richards was second, covering to the left. Matthews was third, bringing his weapon to bear on the right. Murphy was fourth, covering straight behind and up. A chorus of, "Clear," came over the COM, followed by a single shot and, "Really clear."

The foursome, backed by the three troopers remaining in the corridor outside, stood in a room that was perhaps five meters on a side; it was filled with violet pillars that were faced with glowing holopanels--some kind of Covenant workstation, by the look of it. Murphy ordered, "Lima, check for exits. Six, stay on the door for now."

A few heartbeats passed, and then Private Hugo, Lima Eight, sang out, "I gots som't'in' over here. Looks like its seal'd or lock'd or som't'in'."

Murphy made his way over, looking over the massive sliding doors. He was trained in cracking procedures--they were all Special Forces and cross-trained on at least two different specialties--but this looked like a serious job. The doors were huge and heavy-looking, joined in the middle by what appeared to be a complex electronic locking mechanism. He doubted that a C9 shaped charge would even scratch the thing, let alone a SPNKr or two. He got on the COM, "Gunny, we could use Timmons up here. She'll need her toolkit; we've found _something_ that the Covvies really want to keep us out of. Request reinforcements, as well. If there's a decent force on the other side of this door, well..."

Wilson's voice came back over the COM, cool and collected, "You got 'em."


	8. Chapter 8

**25m From Objective Alpha  
Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
04:47 Local Time (08:47 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar) **

Murphy tapped his foot in impatience as he waited for Timmons to complete her cracking procedures on the massive doors. It had taken nearly six minutes to break free enough reinforcements to make Gunny Wilson happy about their chances should a serious force be waiting for the Marines to open the doors. That was okay, though; Timmons had been hard at work finding the correct command pathways to convince the doors' computerized lock that she was an authorized user for just as long. 

She'd arrived with her ruck stuffed full of little electronic widgets, most of which were arcane even to Murphy--who'd _had_ the basic cracking procedures course recently. It seemed that the longer this war went on, the better the UNSC got a breaking into Covenant data systems, the more complex the gadgetry needed to be. AI and electronic encryption were the only two areas of technology where it seemed that the UNSC had a slight edge over their opponents, and it was a constant race to ensure that it remained that way--humanity couldn't afford to fall behind in yet another area if it was to survive.

Specialist Timmons had her little phone-pad-looking device magnetically attached to the doors; she was constantly punching in alphanumeric code on it while consulting a small datapad with the other hand. Thirty seconds crept past, their silent movement only marked by a cough here or the scuffle of feet there. Finally, one hundred and two seconds after the last trooper had been placed in a position to fire into the archway, she looked up at Murphy and nodded her readiness.

Murphy nodded back as he glanced around at the extra ten troopers assigned to his "fireteam". It was really closer to a little more than a squad, now; but the Gunny had decided to keep him as "Johnny-on-the-Spot" for the time being, with all of the casualties that the company had taken. They were down to less than four E-5s and above in the entire company; most squad-level positions were being held by corporals and lance corporals. There was even one squad that was currently being led by a PFC! The unit was down to about sixty effectives, though; most "squads" were really understrength fireteams of six men or less.

All that meant was that Murphy was the one left holding the bag when it all came undone. Timmons turned back to her keypad, leaned to the left of the door to provide a clear line of fire, and hit four quick keystrokes. The doors whipped apart with pneumatic swiftness, and blazing plasma fire came pouring out. Green, blue, and purple bolts seared the atmosphere, their ionized gasses stripping electrons from the surrounding air as they streaked towards the Marines' positions in unaimed suppressive fire. The ODSTs returned fire, their tracers appearing as lazy bolts of fire reaching back into the darkened doorway. A trio of SPNKrs flashed out, their detonations sounding like one combined rumble, and the suppressive fire from the other side of the arch slackened in intensity for a moment.

A roaring could be heard, as if a herd of male gorillas had gotten loose in the base somehow. _These_ "gorillas", however, were infinitely more lethal than a pack of silverbacks. Not one, not two, not even four, but _six_ squidheads--most in blue armor, with a lone exception in violet--came bursting through the doorway, their shields flashing blue with multiple impacts. Their plasma rifles flashed the same tone as the devices superheated the atmosphere in between their two capacitors and sent it burning downfield towards their Marine targets.

As the three ODSTs with rocket launchers brought them to bear, a trio of Elites tossed plasma grenades. Two missed, forcing their targets to dive aside and abandon the launchers; one, though, stuck to its target.

Lance Corporal Weinbender, someone that Murphy had known and worked closely with for better than a _year_ of waketime, had less than three seconds to do something about it. He knew that the grenade wasn't going to come off, so he did the only thing he could: he rushed the bastard that had killed him. He was less than a pace and a half to the creature, turning to bring another one of the blue-armored behemoths into his sights, when three things happened simultaneously. First, he pulled the trigger on his surface-to-surface missile launcher. Second, the Elite next to him brought its heavy plasma rifle down on his helmet with a loud _crunch_ of vertebrae crumbling. Finally, the grenade detonated in a blue-white flash. It vaporized the top half of the Marine and threw the squidhead back in a purple spray. Less than a heartbeat later, the 102mm rocket impacted another one of the damned things and turned it into a fine violet mist.

The Marines, well-trained from dozens of drops similar to this, began to concentrate their fire on the power-armored figures in their midst. It was all that they could do, though, to bring the creatures down. Their energy shielding, their speed, and their sheer toughness meant that a single Elite, let alone _four_ of them, was a difficult prospect. They could, and did, die though. They might do it fighting to the last, but they could be killed. It just took a lot of bullets to get the job done.

When the smoke cleared, and all six of the creatures had been reduced to so much offal, there were exactly four troopers left standing--out of nineteen. If Bravo was going to continue taking casualties like this, there was no way it was going to complete its mission. Murphy walked over to where the single purple-armored squidhead was slowly bleeding out onto the freezing floor of the complex and looked it in the eye. He raised his M6 and fired once, putting the creature out of its misery. His grief had been firewalled away from the rest of him and all he could think was, _Gonna need reinforcements. Lots of reinforcements._

He sighed, looked at his three remaining troopers--Timmons, Chu, and Richards--and keyed his COM, "Gunny, we've taken the entrance. I'm down to four effectives, though. I need a corpsman and about twelve or thirteen bags. Things got...bad...there. It looks like the Covvies shot their wad, but I don't want to find out the hard way."

"Roger. Help's on the way, Murphy."

_Right. Help. More people for me to get killed,_ he thought. Then he banished such thoughts from his mind with a sharp headshake; there'd be even fewer of Bravo's troopers going home if he didn't...


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's Note: I know that I've not updated this for quite a while. My apology for that, but I intend to be coming back to it for a conclusion. (Murphy is getting close!) However, I can't make any promises as to my posting schedule; as my personal life has been somewhat crazy of late. I hope to be able to do at least a chapter a month, but I can't guarantee that. I do hope to avoid major disruptions like the one just past, though. Anyway, Bravo is baaaaack!_

**10m From Objective Alpha  
Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
04:51 Local Time (08:51 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Murphy had PFC Chu pushed out on point, his BR55 sweeping the area in front of him through short arcs. Too much had happened by that juncture for things to go wrong again; the troopers _had _to figure out just what the Covvies were trying to protect so fiercely.

Gunny Wilson had detailed another eight marines to Lima, so Murphy had eleven troopers under his command. The rest of Bravo—well, at least the portion not guarding the wounded—was currently assigned to find and disable the remaining anti-aerospace defenses, so that the remainder of the _In Shadow Cloaked_'s marine contingent could make planetfall and reinforce the ODSTs.

"Corp, you might wanna come take a look at this," Chu's voice crackled over the com. It was flat, but Murphy could hear the suppressed consternation underneath.

"On my way. Lima, hold what you've got," Murphy ordered.

He moved forward, his rifle in a tactical present as his eyes swept the darkness ahead. He was less than two meters from Chu's position before the change in the décor registered. Up until that point, the surfacing of the corridor had been the usual purplish-blue hue of Covenant alloys. Now, it had faded to an odd black rock that looked very similar to obsidian--except for two things. One, it was as smooth as glass, with none of the flaking or roughness that usually occurs when such hard rock is tunneled through. And, two, it was shot through with pinpoints of light--almost as if a clear night sky had been transported inside of the base.

Murphy shook his head at the sight and said, "Do you have any idea what it is?"

"Nope. That's why I called you down. This sure doesn't look like any Covvie architecture that I've ever seen in a briefing," Chu replied.

"Well, as long as it doesn't try to attack you, ignore it. Keep your eyes open for any squiddies that might still be waiting for us," Murphy said on the private opchan. He switched back over to the general push for the fireteam and continued, "Lima, the tunnel changes color and looks a little odd up ahead. Don't let it distract you; we're almost to where the Intel briefing insisted that the power core was for the base. Somehow, I don't think that's what's there; but I do think it's important. We're gonna go through any Covvies in our way, _fast_. Clear?"

"Clear," came back the general response.

"Move it out," he finished.

The troopers of Fireteam Lima, Bravo Company of the 139th, moved down the hallway like lethal, black-clad ghosts, weapons ready and senses stretched to the limit. It turned out that the stealth and tension were unneccessary, though; the corridor terminated in another blast door like the one at the other end. Murphy cursed silently, thinking about cover and firelanes as he remembered the "surprise" that had awaited the fireteam behind the first door.

He called over the team channel, "Hold one. Timmons and Richards, front and center."

The two marines made their way carefully up the corridor, both laboring under heavy rucks.

Murphy spoke to the pair, "We need to get this door open, but there's a little problem with that."

Timmons snorted and replied in her soprano, "Yeah, no cover. I can tell that _this_ is gonna be fun."

"Well, you didn't join up for the medical insurance, that's for damned sure," Murphy replied with a trace of humor. He continued, "But I am going to try to make it as survivable as possible. Richards, do you still have that Jackal shield that you took back at the entrance?"

"Yes, Corporal, I do," he replied, sounding surprised that Murphy would know about that.

"The Gunny told me about it," Murphy explained. "Give it to Timmons and show her how to turn it on. When you're done with that, come join me; we're going to set up a little reception for our Covvie friends behind the door over there."

Richards shrugged his ruck off and rummaged through it to find the small forearm device. He ran Timmons through the toggle switch and told her where _not_ to place her arm when she did so; the shield was perfectly capable of breaking its owner's bones when it sprang into being and pushed the limb out of the way. As soon as he was done with that, he shouldered the heavy bag and made his way forward to where Murphy was pacing off distances in the corridor.

Murphy turned to him and said, "How many claymores do you have in that ruck, there?"

Timmons began to grin as the lightbulb went off...


	10. Chapter 10

**2m From Objective Alpha  
Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
04:53 Local Time (08:53 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Timmons finished typing in the last few characters into the alphanumeric pad attached to the blast doors and looked up from her datapad to give a thumbs-up to Murphy. He nodded back, took a moment to check his marines' positions, and ordered over the general push, "Go."

At that simple command, Timmons activated her purloined Jackal arm-shield and hit "Execute" on the small pad. The doors flashed open, _much_ faster than their ponderous bulk would indicate possible; and Timmons began retreating down the tight corridor, her shield held high to protect her from the withering firestorm of plasma that poured out of the opened portal.

Oddly enough--or not, if considered properly--the members of Lima did not return fire. Instead, they waited until Timmons had managed to pass several low, boxy shapes on the corridor floor. As she did, she took two more strides to a small mark, almost invisible against the glossy black wall, and hunkered down behind the shield.

Murphy clacked the claymores' activation trigger thrice, causing the tripod-mounted mines to flash orange-red and roar in a chorus of outraged explosions. The corridor just past Timmons's position was filled with whistling ball bearings, tearing the squidhead response team rushing up the corridor to shreds of purple flesh. She rose from her crouch enough to stick an M6C pistol out from behind her shield and target individual survivors as the rest of Lima rushed forward, weapons blazing, to take advantage of the confusion caused by the mines.

Thirty seconds later, the drop troopers had taken the small room beyond the doors without taking any casualties. Inside, they found not only the Elites' bodies, but something that most definitely did _not_ look like any Covenant power generation system that any of the marines were familiar with.

Muphy spent perhaps thirty seconds detailing sentries and then switched over to a private channel to contact Gunny Wilson, "Bravo Six-One, this is Lima One, over."

"Lima One, this is Bravo Six-One. Go ahead," came back the Gunny's rough, southern-accented alto.

"Lima has secured the objective, but this doesn't look like any power room I've ever seen, Gunny," replied Murphy.

"Well, don't keep me in suspense, Corp," she fired back, with just a touch of impatience coloring her tone.

"The room is about four meters cubed, with several Covvie control consoles in a cross pattern around the center of the room. In the exact center, there is what appears to be a column of plasma, stretching from floor to ceiling. Inside of that is a sphere, maybe forty centimeters in diameter, composed of what appears to be a silvery molten metal of some sort--it keeps shifting its surface pattern," Murphy reported.

Wilson had always been good with words, "So, it's a Covvie lava lamp?"

Murphy grinned and replied, "Something like that, Gunny. Somehow, I think it's supposed to do more than entrance cannabis smokers, though. Request PFC Cooper's presence."

Cooper was Bravo's resident "techie" and Covenant-engineering specialist. He'd been through more xenotech classes than any three other troopers in any ODST unit. If anyone was likely to understand just exactly what the odd construct was, it was him.

Gunnery Sergeant Wilson didn't hesitate one moment, "He's on his way. Any other needs?"

"Negative."

"Keep me updated, Murphy. Bravo Six-One clear," she finished.


	11. Chapter 11

**Objective Alpha  
Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
05:12 Local Time (09:12 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

PFC Cooper hunched over the control podium--at least, that's what he'd said it was--studying a holographic interface. He'd been doing that since he arrived, with only occasional mutters breaking through to the decibel level neccessary to activate his VOX mic. From time to time, he'd glance down at a data tablet that he'd placed next to the controls for the podium. Murphy had gotten a look at that earlier, and the screen had been filled with arcane Covenant runes set next to the UNSC's best-guess translation for each. Aside from Cooper's muttering and the tapping of Murphy's boot on the whatever-the-hell the floor was made out of, the chamber was tomblike in its silence.

Finally, after nearly fifteen minutes of Cooper being mysterious, Murphy couldn't take it any more. He attempted to keep his tone level as he asked, "So, Cooper. Do you have _any_ idea just what this thing is?"

If it weren't for the opaque helmet, Murphy would've been able to see Cooper blink owlishly as he looked up at the noncom. Nonetheless, Murphy still got the sense that perhaps Cooper had forgotten that the corporal was there when Cooper answered, "Oh. Uh...yes, Corporal. It's a power-generator."

Murphy blinked at that, reining in his temper and replying, "So...it's exactly what ONI thought it would be?"

"Sort of."

_I will _not_ strangle him with my bare hands. Gunny Wilson wouldn't like it,_ Murphy thought to himself. He counted to ten in English, Spanish, and Swahili before responding, "Okay. How is it different, aside from looking like nothing _I've_ ever seen in a briefing?"

Cooper had the grace to appear bashful, though just how he did that in the featureless full ODST armor was anyone's guess, before continuing, "Sorry, Corporal. The generator is most definitely not like any Covenant technology that we've ever encountered. In addition, if I'm deciphering these runes correctly--and I think I am--the Covenant were studying it to determine how it works. It seems that they came upon an abandoned base here that someone else left behind. The power core was still functional after what I _think_, if I'm interpereting their time-runes correctly, is several _million_ years."

Murphy whistled. Engineering on that scale of time was not something even the most blue-sky of humanity's reaserch and development groups even thought about.

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Besides that, though, the core--that little ball of silver is what's actually producing the power, by the way--is supposedly running at a tenth of a percent's capacity or so; and the device is putting out a little bit more than the equivalent of a UNSC Frigate's _total_ power resources with its fusion core running at one hundred percent of rated capability," Cooper continued. He paused and then offered the qualifier, "That's assuming, of course, that I've correctly interpereted the data. I'm reasonably sure that I have, though."

Murphy was smart enough to realize when he was faced with a situation that was above his pay grade. As noncoms have throughout history, he relied on the oldest trick in the book: call his superior, "Okay, Cooper. See what you can learn about it." Switching channels, he continued, "Bravo Six-One, this is Lima One, over."

"Lima One, this is Bravo Six-One, wait one," came back Gunny Wilson's voice. A pause of perhaps three or four glutinous seconds passed, and then she continued, "Go ahead, Murphy."

"Gunny, Cooper thinks he's figured out what the lava lamp does. Apparently, the thing really is a power core, just not one the Covvies built. From what he's saying, this thing could power all of Terra's cities, half of the UNSC's starships, and have enough juice left over to microwave some popcorn for your evening's entertainment. I think we should try to get the _Shadow_'s engineering crew, maybe even a science team, down here to look at it," Murphy replied.

"Well, we've got a bit of a problem on that one, Murphy. The Skipper just informed me that we've got multiple Covenant Slipspace signatures inbound, ETA ten mikes. Grab whatever you can, destroy the rest, and evac to Nav Point November. You've got fifteen mikes before the retrieval boats touch down, and seventeen before they lift. Don't miss the bus, Corp," she ordered in crisp tones.

"Acknowledged and understood. Retrieve all possible technology, detonate the rest in place, evac to Point November within fifteen mikes," he repeated.

"Good luck. See you on the ride up. Six-One clear."

He switched channels to the fireteam's dedicated frequency and began issuing orders, "Lima, listen up. We've got multiple hostile ships inbound. Cooper, see if you can detach the power core and bring it with us. You've got two minutes. Richards, pull what C12 you've got left; we're not leaving anything for the Covvies to get their claws on. Everyone else, stand ready for evac. We leave in three mikes, people. Evac route is to Nav Point November, and the last boat lifts in sixteen minutes. Move like you've got a purpose."


	12. Chapter 12

**Objective Alpha  
Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
05:14 Local Time (09:14 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Murphy frowned behind his opaqued faceplate and asked (quite calmly, he thought), "What the _fuck_ do you mean, 'We're going to have to leave it'? That is _not_ an acceptable solution, Marine."

Cooper cringed internally but rallied well, "Corporal, with all due respect, the power core will likely detonate if we attempt to move or destroy it. That will cause a release of energy greater than one _thousand_ times that the catastrophic overload of a frigate's fusion core would. We'll be lucky if the _moon_ is still in one piece afterward. Not only would everyone on the surface be dead, it's likely that debris from the explosion would take out the _Shadow_ as well."

Murphy blinked, momentarily taken aback. He thought about it for perhaps three seconds and then continued, "Oh. Well, then. We _can't_ leave it for the Covvies; if they manage to reproduce it, humanity is a goner. Which of the two is less likely to wind up with all of us as glowing dust?"

"Moving it, Corp. I'd really rather not do either, but if I have to choose..." Cooper let his voice trail off and offered a resigned shrug.

"Okay. You've got one minute to power it down and take any steps you deem necessary for general safety. If you need an extra set of hands, ask; just don't tell them that it's likely to kill all of us, eh?"

"Understood, Corporal. I don't need a hand just yet, thanks," Cooper said, coldly refocusing on his task. He immediately went to the Covenant control console and began manipulating holographic runes.

The matter as much in hand as possible, Murphy turned to the trio of drop troopers who were emplacing explosives with great care and--shifting frequencies--asked, "Richards, how're we coming?"

"Almost there, Corp. We've got two more charges to set and then I've got to test the detonators. I'd really rather that nobody else is in the room when that happens, though," came the immediate response.

"'Kay. As soon as your boys're done there, clear 'em out. Cooper and I'll be another few seconds; he's trying to do something a wee bit delicate right now," Murphy replied.

He turned away from the rest of the troopers in the small room to clasp his hands together; they'd been shaking with adrenalin overload ever since Cooper illuminated the situation for him.

The sound of Cooper's voice on the COM almost made him jump out of his skin, "Corporal, I'm about to shut down the plasma field. If you could remove the core immediately afterwards, I'd be most grateful; the antigravity generator holding it in place is drawing power from the plasma flow itself. I'd rather not find out if the core is sensitive to shock--would you?"

"Not really. I plan to die in bed," Murphy replied with a rictus grin before moving over to the edge of the magnetic bottle that held the plasma in place. He waited for the glow to fade and the imperceptable tug on his metal gear to go away before reaching out to the core itself. At the last moment, when he stretched out his arms, he realized that--if the thing had been suspended in ionized gas the temperature of a star's core--it was going to just burn right through his hands and into the floor. Fortunately for the human contingent on the surface of that moon, Murphy wasn't fast enough to get his hands out of the way in time. The sphere dropped into his grip, feeling as cold and dead as the surface under his feet.

He frowned, but stowed the thought for the moment. As he _very_ carefully placed the sphere into his ruck, he turned to Richards and asked, "Demolitions?"

"Done. I just need to test the detonators," responded Richards.

"Okay," Murphy said. He switched to the general push and ordered, "Everybody but Richards out into the corridor."

As everyone moved out into the corridor--weapons at the ready--Richards pulled a small radio transmitter from his webbing and pushed a button on it, watching a set of lights. Each burned a steady amber, indicating that all of the detonators were reading and responding to the test signal. He reported over the COM, "Corp, the charges're set and ready."

"Alright. Let's move it out, people. Standard Formation Two. Richards, once we clear the dogleg, detonate the charges," Murphy ordered.

A gathered, "Hoowah," answered him.

The troopers moved out down the corridor, the point team sweeping the darkness ahead with their weapons while the rearguard kept a sharp eye on their backtrail.

They reached the dogleg in the corridor without incident. Murphy ordered, "Richards, we're clear."

The response came over the general push, "Fire in the hole!"

A muffled "_whump!_" was transmitted through the floor and walls as all of the C12 detonated. There would be no records left for the Covenant to recover; all data had been erased by fire and shrapnel when Richards completed his work of art.

The troopers managed to make it through the snowy landscape to the transports with two minutes to spare. Murphy detailed perimeter security elements and then trotted over to where Gunny Wilson was setting up an LZ.

She turned to him as soon as the IR strobes were set at the corners and wind direction was indicated with an arrow made of the same. She asked, "So, Murphy. How'd it go?"

"Clockwork, Gunny. Clockwork. We recovered the thing that Cooper insists made the lava lamp work; I've got it right here in my ruck. So long as nobody starts shooting at us, we should be good," he responded in tight, nervous tones.

The Gunny had always been pretty good at reading between the lines; you didn't make it as far as she did in the Marines by not understanding your subordinates. Wilson lowered her voice as she switched over to a private channel, "So, how bad is it if it takes fire and goes critical?"

"Worst case?"

"Worst case," she confirmed.

"Oh, about as bad as you can imagine. Right around two hundred teratons' worth of energy. It'd take a good portion of the moon with it," he replied in a low, terse voice.

"Right. So, we don't let you get shot," she replied after a short pause to gather herself. She switched over to the general push and ordered, "Kalishna, get your sorry ass over here and bring the SPNKr reloads' case."

"Yes, Gunny."

As the younger private made his way through the driving snow, Wilson turned back to her corporal-turned-walking bomb and said, "We're putting it inside of the case; it's the most resistant thing we've got. You're carrying it. _Don't_ drop it. Clear?"

After a hasty swallow of water to relieve his parched throat, Murphy replied, "Clear, Gunny. I'll get it done."

"I know you will, Corp. That's why I'm letting _you_ carry it instead of _me_," she replied with a note of gallows humor in her voice...


	13. Chapter 13

**Nav Point November  
Delta 132 IVa (Temperate Zone)  
05:24 Local Time (09:24 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

The first D77-TC Pelican dropped into the thin upper atmosphere in a severe ballistic trajectory that would've given the nervous shakes to any piloting instructor back at the UNSC's "Deep Black" aerospace pilot training course. First Lieutenant Eisenberg guided the Pelican with an expert hand, avoiding the vicious crosswinds, updrafts, and downdrafts of the howling blizzard pummeling the marines far below. Flying on instruments alone, he concentrated on the holographic HUD that was telling him everything that he needed to know about his trajectory; to do otherwise was to court vertigo and near-certain death.

As the ablative heat shielding on the belly of the dropship heated to scorching temperatures, he keyed his COM, "Bravo Six-One, this is Pelican Oscar Five-Three-Niner. I am inbound on your position, ETA one-mike-thirty. Please confirm LZ coordinates and sitrep, over."

Gunnery Sergeant Wilson's rough alto responded to his smooth tenor, "Oscar-539, this is Bravo Six-One. LZ is cold, repeat, cold. Dumping coordinates and latest met report now."

"Got it, Bravo Six-One. Many thanks. See you in one mike. Oscar-539 clear."

Gunny Wilson switched over to the all-unit push and ordered, "One minute! Fireteam Lima, I want you on the first boat out. You got that, Murphy?"

"Aye, aye, Gunny," Corporal Murphy responded.

Wilson went on to detail loading orders until the howling of the dropship's engines had gradually overtaken the howling of the storm itself. Pelican Oscar-539 dropped through the swirling snow, hovering for a "hot" loading; it only dropped into ground-effect mode and waited the minimum amount of time for the marines to load into the back. The eleven marines of Lima poured into the back of the dropship, finding seats as needed and even grabbing onto hang straps in a case or two. Then the remainder of First Squad of First Platoon piled in--a paltry three troopers out of the twelve that had touched down less than an hour ago.

As the last trooper hit the blood tray of the Pelican, the crew chief--a much-scarred marine with Master Sergeant's rockers on her sleeve and a nametag that read "Oberon"--hit the ramp retraction switch. The ramp closed up and formed a seal with a hatch that came down from the top, sealing the marines in.

The crewchief waited until the telltales on the hatch control burned a steady amber, indicating a tight atmospheric seal, before keying her COM, "Hatch sealed! We're green!"

Whatever the pilot or co-pilot replied was inaudible to the marines clustered in the troop bay of the dropship. Oberon turned to her charges and yelled, "Hold on to your asses!"

As she shouted the second-to-last syllable, the steady hissing of the dropship's engines rose to a keening roar and gee forces shoved the troopers roughly down into their seats. The few that were standing held even more tightly onto their straps as they attempted to keep their feet. The dropship fought tooth and nail against the restraining twins of atmosphere and gravity as it clawed towards orbit and its mothership.

As the gee forces abated and the roar of their passage faded with the atmosphere to almost nothing, Murphy rose and strode to the rear of the compartment. He rested his hand against the icy-cold clearplast that sealed away hungry vacum and stared at the darkened face of the receding moon that had become the graveyard of so many friends and companions. In the far distance, he was able to pick out pinpricks of light that were the other dropships, rising like so many angels carrying their precious cargo home. A single thought dominated his consciousness, _So few of us. Was it worth it?_

As the black thoughts of his position and decisions in this xenocidal war rumbled discontentedly in the back of his mind, he let the majesty of the deep starry black wash over him. It was due to his position at the rear of the Pelican and focus on the wider universe that he was the first to see the rippling holes that began to appear in space, just aft of the rearmost dropships...


	14. Chapter 14

**Extra-Atmospheric Transit  
Delta 132 System  
05:27 Local Time (09:27 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Murphy cursed quietly and helplessly as he watched the two Covenant cruisers tear holes through reality and shift from slipspace back into n-space at the very edge of the moon's atmosphere. The powerful ships, bulbous and sleek with the purplish-blue color of Covenant alloys, appeared to hang dead in space for a few bare seconds. During that time, the ships were attempting to stabilize their sensors and other systems from the shaking-up that the transition from one dimension to another always caused.

It was those first few seconds that were to be the decisive ones for the UNSC personnel in the Delta 132 system. The bridge of the powerful _Dirk_-class destroyer, the _In Shadow Cloaked_, was a scene of organized chaos. They'd had the enormous dual Magnetic Acceleration Cannons' capacitors charged for several minutes now--reducing their lifetimes by hundreds of hours simply due to the load on them. Captain Genyoshi--a slight, greying, almost-dapper man of Asiatic extraction--said quietly and definitely into the bustle, "Fire Plan Delta. Execute."

From Murphy's standpoint, he could not see the immense flash of ionized ferromagnetic sheathing that was released by the enormous, three-hundred metric ton, tungsten-cored projectile as it exited the barrel of the MAC. He _could_ see, however, the impact on the unshielded cruiser.

The ship, so close that he could actually make out its outline with his naked eye--knife-fight range for a deep space engagement--reeled from the impact of the projectile on its port bow. The cruiser's violet armor shattered, sending pieces the size of an apartment building spinning noiselessly into interplanetary space. Atmosphere plumed from the wound in an enormous fireball that was quickly snuffed out by the vacuum. The ship itself listed to the starboard aft side, its ventral port aft swinging around to meet the _second_ flashing impact of a MAC round. This one broke the back of the ship, causing it to split in two and flash with the star-bright explosive release of its three fusion cores' magnetic bottles.

As Murphy blinked away the dark spots from his vision and listened to the cheers of his mates, he was able to make out the swarming fireflies of Archer missiles racing for the other cruiser. The cruiser had managed to get its point-defense lasers online, though; they flashed in intense red rods of light that targeted individual missiles with millimetric precision. Their numbers winnowed down somewhat, the missiles began to impact. The first twenty or so were little flashes of coherent light against that massive hull, splintering armor and cratering the outer surface but causing no serious damage. As the second pod's worth of missiles raced to meet the ship, its shields came up--just as a Shiva nuclear missile detonated at the outer edge of the protective field. This staggered the cruiser, but was unable to bring her down.

Aboard the _Shadow, _Captain Genyoshi calmly considered his options with the speed and clarity of thought that had gotten him through three seperate engagements against superior Covenant forces--no mean feat for a captain in the hopelessly-outclassed UNSC Navy. He came to the conclusion that there was only one way to pick up the ODSTs and their precious cargo. He made his way to the helm, putting his hand on the shoulder of the Lieutenant (J.G.) who manned the console. The jig was a good helm officer, but she lacked the touch that more than thirty years of shiphandling brings.

The Captain ordered, "Move, please."

As she did so, the _Shadow_'s Artificial Intelligence, Ulairi, faded into being on the small holographic generator to the starboard side of the bridge. The A.I.--a tall, spare figure dressed in a cowled black cloak that appeared to fade to swirling shadow at feet, hands, and face--hissed in a low, weird, sibilant voice, "Captain, what are you doing?"

"Save the theatrics, Ulairi. I'm going to save us _and _those marines. Prepare the ship for a short atmospheric insertion and alert the hanger crews that the dropships will be coming in extremely hot; have damage control and corpsmen standing by. I want you to take over weapons control and point defense. Make sure that we smack those Covenant bastards with everything we've got; we need to keep them off balance for a little bit if we're going to pull this off," the captain ordered.

"Communications, send our heading, velocity, and probable trajectory to those Pelicans; I'm dumping it to you now. Engineering, make sure that the slipspace capacitors are charged; go to one-twenty percent on the reactors," he continued, fingers flying over the control board for the ship. He hit four keystrokes in rapid succession and said, "Oh, and hang on. This is going to be a little rough."

"Captain, regulations require me to point out that your plan--if I've divined it correctly--is completely against UNSC protocol. No ship has ever survived an in-atmosphere slipspace insertion, and there is no anecdotal, theoretical, or experimental evidence to indicate that _we _will," Ulairi continued, dropping the sibilant hiss for a more normal baritone. That was the problem with "smart" A.I.s; they had a tendency to build up their personalities based upon the oddest characters. In Ulairi's case, the donor of the brain that his computing pathways were based upon had been an ancient-fiction fanatic. He'd read something by an early-twentieth century fantasy author as a child that had stuck out in his mind for the rest of his life--and that of the A.I. who had become his mental successor.

"Ulairi, I have no intention of going into slipspace inside the atmosphere; as a matter of fact, if you'll check the nuclear release authorization that I'm dumping to you now, you'll understand. I will need you to time the jump, though," Genyoshi responded.

The A.I.'s holographic representation was stunned into silence for perhaps two seconds--an eternity for a being that existed in a time frame measurable by nanoseconds. He responded, "I see. It certainly has the advantage of audacity."

"I see no other choice," Captain Genyoshi replied, his smooth features set in grim determination...


	15. Chapter 15

**Extra-Atmospheric Transit  
Delta 132 System  
05:28 Local Time (09:28 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Aboard Pelican Oscar-539, the pilot's tense tenor crackled over the COM, "Hang on to something. We're in for a rough ride ahead."

As he completed his statement, the sensation of microgravity grabbed hold of the marines in the aft compartment. The few standing grabbed for hang straps as one, their flailing movements uncoordinated for the first few moments. The inner ears of every trooper on that dropship complained bitterly as the Pelican shifted through three axi, bringing its nose to bear on the moon far below. Suddenly, weight returned, redoubled, as the pilot redlined the thrusters in an apparently-suicidal power dive.

Murphy, as the ranking noncom amongst the non-crew troopers stuck in the blood tray of the dropship, felt it was his position to ask, "Master Sergeant, what's going on? Why are we going _towards_ those Covvie bastards?"

"You _don't_ want to know, Corp. Trust me," her voice responded, low and strained...

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Aboard the destroyer _In Shadow Cloaked_, the boat bay officer readied his crew, letting them know just what was to come in the next few minutes. As he had anticipated, there were some critics of The Captain's plan.

A buzzsaw of disbelief howled in the briefing compartment, "We're _what?!_...there's no way...the Skipper has to be out of his goddamned _mind_..."

"That is _enough!_" Warrant Officer Mendoza's voice cut through the quickly-rising shouts like a plasma torch through a cotton shirt. "The Skipper has laid down a plan. I don't _care_ if _you_ think it's crazy; he's _The Skipper_, and we are _fucking_ going to do what we _need_ to in order to bring _our_ goddamned jarheads _home! Do you read me?!_"

A chorus of, "Yes, Warrant Officer!" came back.

"Good. Now get to it," he commanded.

The bay became a bustle of activity as ratings readied crash-absorbtion systems, fire-extinguishing systems, and the thousand-and-one other systems that had to be taken care of in such a technically demanding job...

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The _Shadow_'s A.I., Ulairi, swirled into being on the holographic pedastal next to the helm controls. He folded his robed arms together and said, "Captain, the Covenant cruiser is firing its plasma torpedoes. Impact in thirty seconds. ETA to atmospheric entry forty seconds. Tracking data coming up on your console."

"Thank you, Ulairi," Captain Genyoshi replied. His fingers flew over the controls, altering the ship's trajectory ever so slightly. Twenty seconds passed by, their motion marked by the rising tension in the cramped bridge.

Ulairi's voice filled the compartments of the _Shadow_, counting down, "All hands, brace for impact. Impact in ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

As the artificial construct's voice hit the one-second mark, Captain Genyoshi stabbed at the emergency dorsal thruster pack control. Like all UNSC ships of the line, the _In Shadow Cloaked_ was fitted along her dorsal, ventral, port, and starboard mainlines with vessels containing trihydride tetrazine and hydrogen peroxide. When mixed, the two chemicals exploded with enough force to literally shove the ship onto a new course. The destroyer heaved bodily downward, causing the few of her personnel who had not had time or opportunity to anchor themselves to go flying about their compartments.

"Damage report," the Captain's cool, calm, unhurried voice ordered.

Ulairi responded, "No damage reported as of yet; the plasma torpedoes missed and are coming about for a second try. Casualty reports thus far are light."

"If I'm right, those torpedoes won't _get_ a second try," Genyoshi muttered to himself.

"Yes, and if you're wrong, they won't _have_ to try," the A.I. responded in a supercilious tone...

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Murphy had patched his HUD into the dropship's sensor system. He could see the _Shadow_ on the Pelican's lidar screen, coming up from behind them at flank speed. Ahead, the other dropships were stretched out like beads on a string, maneuvering slightly in random directions to throw off the Covenant cruiser's targeting for its lasers. It was working, for the most part. The last few dropships to load were the first ones to reach the atmosphere, their bellies beginning to glow with the heat of reentry.

Suddenly, the _In Shadow Cloaked_ roared by, less than five meters overhead. The troopers in the aft compartment of the dropship jumped as one as the ponderous destroyer punched past them into the outer envelope of the moon's atmosphere. The drag on the much larger ship was many times greater than that on the relatively-tiny dropships. It caused a bow shock of atmosphere to ionize, fiilling the space around the destroyer with flame...

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Warrant Mendoza watched from behind protective clearplast as the hangar doors opened onto Hell. Fire and plasma rippled at the edges of the doors, and the first Pelican barely managed to muscle its way through the slipstream and into the bay. It held onto its trajectory only through sheer determination and a whole bunch of good fortune. As soon as it had made the transition from streaming, ionized atmosphere to the relatively-still air of the hangar bay, it crashed into the decking with the most god-awful racket that he'd ever heard...

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The bridge of the _In Shadow Cloaked_ rocked and pitched from the turbulence of the megaton vessel's plunge into atmosphere. Captain Genyoshi rode the helm with an iron hand, holding the destroyer to her course despite her lack of aerodynamic stability.

The A.I., Ulairi, kept a running commentary on the plasma torpedoes that the enemy cruiser had loosed, "Torpedoes have made course correction. Impact in twenty seconds...Ten seconds...Seven seconds...Wait, torpedoes are losing coherancy. They're being disrupted by the ionization of our passage. Brilliant, Captain!"

"Well, it was our only chance..." Genyoshi muttered, concentrating on guiding the _Shadow_'s headlong plunge towards the ground, so far below...

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Murphy watched as the external camera cut out in a wash of air heated to its ionization point. The dropship plunged through the steadily-thickening atmosphere of the moon, headed for its parent like a homesick finch.

The copilot came back over the internal COM, since the pilot was somewhat busy handling the ship, "Hold on tight back there. We're about to transition from this shit to nearly-dead air. It might be a bit rough."

Murphy wondered what in the Hell the idiot was talking about, until the nose camera whose feed he'd pirated cleared enough for him to read:  
"Hatch 17, Portside Dorsal  
WARNING: DO NOT OPEN IN SLIPSPACE"  
His breath caught in his throat as he realized that the pilot meant to enter the hangar bay _through_ the slipstream of the destroyer's own passage...

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"That's the last of them!" crowed Mendoza's voice over the SHIPCOM. He hit the hatch control, shutting the massive hangar doors and repressurizing the bay as firefighting teams and corpsmen raced towards the crashed dropships in the bay...

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"Captain, the boat bays report all dropships recovered," Ulairi said.

"Alright, launch the Shiva," Captain Genyoshi ordered.

"I have serious reservations about this pl..." the A.I. began.

Genyoshi cut him off, "Do it. Are your calculations done?"

"Yes, sir. If I may say so, it has been good working with you. Missile away," Ulairi continued. His voice blared from speakers throughout the ship, "Collision warning. Slipspace warning. Impact in ten seconds. Slipspace transition in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Impact!"

The thirty megaton warhead detonated dead ahead, and the ship _heaved_...


	16. Chapter 16

**UNSC Destroyer _In Shadow Cloaked_  
Interstellar Space (Exact Position Unknown)  
10:15 Local Time (14:15 Zulu)  
January 10th, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

Captain Genyoshi turned towards the holographic pedastal and gazed on the greyish-black clad, eight inch tall figure that had just swirled into being and asked, "Have you and Navigation finished your astrographic survey?"

"Yes, sir. It appears that we are approximately here," the A.I. replied. His figure faded away in wisps of shadow, to be replaced by a galactic map and a small green icon designating their position. The map zoomed in to show a rash of orange and red system icons nearby, with a small sprinkling of green ones further out towards the galactic rim. Ulairi continued, "We are rather farther from UNSC-held space than we were back in Delta-132. It should take us about three or four weeks for the transit back to Sol. However, that is contingent on getting the slipspace drive working, first."

"I know, I know. How is Engineering coming?" the captain asked with a sigh.

"Well, aside from a few choice words that Chief Engineer Adams had to say (I'm not sure I was supposed to overhear those, but...), repairs are progressing as projected. The EMP from the Shiva, combined with the stress of an insertion, really did a number on some of the more delicate circuitry," Ulairi responded.

"It was the only way to create enough of a vacuum for us to go to slipspace without exposing ourselves to fire that would have been capable of completely disabling us. I had no choice, Ulairi," Genyoshi replied, shaking his head.

"I understand, Captain. I just hope that FLEETCOM sees things your way."

"Me, too. Me, too," Captain Genyoshi let his voice fade for a moment, considering the coming Board of Inquiry that no doubt awaited him at the end of his mission. He then continued, "So, the repairs should be done in about three weeks, and we'll be able to make them from onboard stores?"

"Yes, sir. Lieutenant Commander Adams's exact words were, 'It'll be space tape and six-guage cable, and I wouldn't want to push it further than we have to, but it should work,'" the A.I. said. "He added a few choice pejoratives after that, but I think that it might be wiser if those were not discussed in polite company."

Letting loose his first chuckle since that white-knuckled ride into Hell, Genyoshi ran his hand through his greying hair and replied, "You're probably right." After a moment, he added, "Do we know anything more about the item that Bravo Company brought back?"

"No, sir. It remains a mystery, and I'd wager that it will remain so for some time. The mechanics of its operation are completely beyond our shipboard resources' capabilities to probe. More than likely, ONI will be able to figure something out about it; but that will take time," Ulairi said, with a shrug of his robed shoulders that caused shadow to swirl around his feet and cowl.

"Alright, then. Let's get our marines into cryo; they've earned some rest."

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Corporal Murphy sat in the small berthing bay, holding a framed holo in his hands. His face was impassive, save for the coldness in his grey eyes. The holo was a scene in some smoky bar. Two men in UNSC uniforms--one with strawberry blonde hair, an easy smile, and freckles; and one with dark hair, a stocky build, and a stolid expression into which were set laughing eyes--were standing with drinks in their hands, posing for the holocamera. One breast read "Murphy", the other "Weinbender".

Murphy looked up at the scuff of a bootheel, ready to tear off someone's head for interrupting his reverie. Only when he saw that it was Gunny Wilson did he relax somewhat. The older black woman came over and sat down, her scarred visage impassive, yet somehow sympathetic.

She asked, "Corp. D'you know how I got this?", pointing to the webwork of scars that ran down the left side of her face and neck.

"No, I never heard that one, Gunny," he replied in a toneless voice.

"It was on Eridanus II, in May of 2530. I was assigned, along with 1st Batt, 21st Div, 9th MEF, to hold Elysium City for as long as possible. You see, the civvies were being starlifted to transports; we needed to hold the Covvie ground forces off as long as possible. Well, apparently, the Covvies decided that our position was the best place to throw their troops at. It got _bad_, Corp, real bad. We were down to half-mags for the four of us left, and I was the senior noncom when the recall sounded. Out of the thousand marines that were sent to hold that portion of the city, _three hundred_ made it out alive. Hell, I was a fucking _Lance Corporal_ at the time. I got this," she continued, pointing to the scarring, "when one of my marines, Private Powell, took several needles. They...detonated, leaving me and PFC Klein as the only two alive. I was in and out of it; he _carried_ my sorry ass the last two hundred meters to the dropship. As we were loading, he was...hit and killed."

The Gunnery Sergeant's face grew old-looking and pensive for a moment as she finished, "It never gets any easier, Murphy. But the thing that helps me is knowing that, if I didn't do it, somebody who wasn't as good as me would get even more kids killed. Shooting those Covvie bastards isn't too bad, either."

Letting her voice trail off, the Gunnery Sergeant rose and left the berth without looking back, her spine held straight.

Murphy sat there for another few seconds, holding the holo, his face set in hard lines. A single tear rolled down his right cheek, brushed away in an automatic reflex. He stuck the hologram back to the bulkhead and rose, heading for the cryo bay. One thought resounded in his mind, _For the fallen..._


End file.
